120 THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS 



If, weary of the endless difficulties involved in the 

 determination of species, the investigator, contenting him- 

 self with the rough practical distinction of separable kinds, 

 endeavours to study them as they occur in nature to 

 ascertain their relations to the conditions which surround 

 them, their mutual harmonies and discordances of structure, 

 the bond of union of their parts and their past history, he 

 finds himself, according to the received notions, in a mighty 

 maze, and with, at most, the dimmest adumbration of a 

 plan. If he starts with any one clear conviction, it is that 

 every part of a living creature is cunningly adapted to some 

 special use in its life. Has not his Paley told him that 

 that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully 

 adjusted as so much packing between the other organs ? 

 And yet, at the outset of his studies, he finds that no 

 adaptive reason whatsoever can be given for one-half of 

 the peculiarities of vegetable structure ; he also discovers 

 rudimentary teeth, which are never used, in the gums of 

 the young calf and in those of the foetal whale ; insects 

 which never bite have rudimental jaws, and others which 

 never fly have rudimental wings ; naturally blind creatures 

 have rudimental eyes ; and the halt have rudimentary 

 limbs. So, again, no animal or plant puts on its perfect 

 form at once, but all have to start from the same point, 

 however varioas the course which each has to pursue. 

 Not only men and horses, and cats and dogs, lobsters and 

 beetles, periwinkles and mussels, but even the very sponges 

 and animalcules commence their existence under forms 

 which are essentially undistinguishable ; and this is true 

 of all the infinite variety of plants. Nay, more, all living 

 beings march side by side along the high road of develop- 

 ment, and separate the later the more like they are ; like 

 people leaving church, who all go down the aisle, but having 

 reached the door some turn into the parsonage, others go 

 down the village, and others part only in the next parish. 

 A man in his development runs for a little while parallel 

 with, though never passing through, the form of the meanest 

 worm, then travels for a space beside the fish, then journeys 

 along with the bird and the reptile for his fellow travellers ; 

 and only at last, after a brief companionship with the 

 highest of the four-footed and four-handed world, rises into 

 the dignity of pure manhood. No competent thinker of 

 the present day dreams of explaining these indubitable 

 facts by the notion of the existence of unknown and 



